Thinky Thoughts - 12th September 2016

6:58pm

I'm not feeling great at all.  The anxiety has continued to slowly rumble from the pit of my chest right up to top of my throat.  At times my guts quiver, and, like a sleepless night, that empty feeling lingers.

I've been struggling to keep my head in a good place, for the past few months at least.  Most of the time I can steady my thoughts, but the waves of overwhelming worthlessness keep hitting me hard.  It's weird, even as I'm typing this, I started off wanted to put myself to sleep and now I'm kind of okay.  I know writing and clearly thinking things through helps me but I can't walk around all day writing every single thing down can I?  Maybe that is the answer.  I just need to get paid for it so I can continue to support my family. Hah!

Moving on. From the outside, I'm guessing everything looks peachy.  We have just moved into our own beautiful new house, we are financially stable, we have nice things, our Autistic Daughter is moving forward by leaps and bounds, I have an amazing wife who looks after us like a hero.  I should be happy, right.  So why do I feel so low?  Why do I feel so defeated?

Last week at work, we went through this killer training sesh.  All about Leadership.  Being in the role I am, influencing is key.  Getting results is key.  Growth is key.  Without these, there is no moving forward.  It was a great sesh in the sense that it opened up a hell of of a lot of realisations, most notable being that I have been dwelling on the wrong things & using old-school techniques to manage my team.  I learned that 21st century success is built on social cooperation.  Being the introvert that I am, faking it in a leadership role is already challenging & now I have to be social! Haha!  Here we go.  Well, I've made it this far, but this is some next-level skill I have to wear.  I know what I have to do.  It will certainly be tough, but I just need to take my personal awareness up a notch and land on the one phrase that will keep me in line.  

Right now, it is that "everything I do is for the benefit, well-being & growth of my family; specifically, to better the quality of life for my daughter".  

That should be enough, right?  Lot's of questions I have to keep asking myself & lots of questions I have to seek the answers to.  I'm feeling a far bit better now.  Writing & thinking things through is crucial.  I have to commit to this.

Family

Family are many things. I always saw family as important, but that level of importance hit a whole new level in 2012 when my daughter was born. She is my world and I'm in awe of both her and my soon-to-be wife every day. They are 2nd to none and I'd give up everything in a heartbeat for their happiness.

Yesterday, I experienced another layer of family. One that I hadn't felt in a long time. My siblings & I, the 4 of us, have always shared a special bond. Life gets busy though when you're growing your own families and yes it may feel like its faded a little over the years but we are always there for each other. We stood united, along with our cousins & aunties & uncles & my pop to farewell one of the most amazing ladies I've ever met. It was a tough day. Emotions up, down, left, right and any other way you could possibly imagine. I couldn't be prouder to be part of this family. I'd missed this & them a lot and it was great see and understand the impact that Gran had on them too.

There is no simple way to explain what Gran meant to me. My sister summed it up pretty well in her beautiful eulogy in that she always made us feel special, like the most important person in the world, that we were capable of anything and that she was so very proud of us no matter what life choices we made. Elaborating, for me specifically, that she always filled the void of honest, positive encouragement in my personal life. In her own unique way, she was a motivator, coach and mentor and taught me to believe in and challenge myself.

The part that upsets me the most is that I never truly realised this until recently. I mean, I always valued her words because they were filled with love and made me feel awesome. But the actual depth of those words subtly added to my confidence and played a huge part in making me who I am today.  This is the most important thing I wanted to tell her before she left us. When I saw her the day before, I could only squeeze out the words "I love you" and "I miss you", even though I knew she was close, I could not bring myself to tell her, to accept that she might not be there the next day.

And now that she is gone, all I can think about is the time I've wasted being away from her and, upon reflection, just how much not having her around has left a massive gap in my life. Sure, we all say life gets busy, and we all make assumptions that the people we love will be there tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. But they sure as hell may not be. If there is one final lesson Gran has taught me it's that I need to value the people that care about me & that I care about the most. Even if it is difficult, even if there is distance, even if there are daily distractions, nobody is more important than these people, for they are the ones that value & deserve our love the most.

While I'll never be sure, I'll keep telling myself that Gran knew exactly what I meant and that from now on, to the people that I love, I'll speak loud & clear.

January 7th 2016 - Oops

Ok, so I missed my goal of 30 mins each day, but it's for good reason.  My fiance proposed an 8 week fitness & well-being challenge and I'm all on board.  In the last 3 days alone I've pretty much cut out all sugar (which I was doing well with before xmas) including in my cappuccino's.  I've even switched to having latte's so that there's no chocolate involved.  I'm eating good amounts of fruit & veg and exercising, let's say, "regularly" at the moment.  This includes a total of 2 hours either on the treadmill or exercise bike.  A slow start, but I'm gaining momentum.  Still well short of where I was at 5-6 years ago, but I'm building it up with a little extra each day.  I'm just going to quickly jump on the scales & see what it says...74.1.. hard to gauge at the moment as I last weighed myself first thing in the morning.  Anyway, I'll keep the progress updates coming through here.

Had a great few weeks with my daughter.  She has come so far since we have been on holidays together.  Just on her 2nd Birthday a little over a year ago, she started walking.  This time around, for her 3rd Birthday, she's really come to life with her love for her parents.  Her awareness has increased tenfold & we are loving the cuddles & interactions.  

One of her favorite things at the moment is the new trampoline we got her, even more so since I put the tent over it.  She takes her sock monkey doll in there and plays for ages.  She's getting better at bouncing every day, but mostly loves just running around in circles, crashing into the nets and falling down... all with sock monkey in hand.  The other favorite is Emma Wiggle.  Man, she loves that show like crazy.  She's really into dancing, music & hand-movement type games & songs, so the 2 are going hand in hand.  A part from all that, we are starting to get repetitive words out of her. The most common one is "ottel" which means bottle of water.  While we were away in Brisbane, it was "nan", "mama" and "addy" which is daddy.  Small wins, just hope she keeps it going.  There are number of tactics we are trying to encourage her speech.  It's tough & frustrating for all of us, but if we can get this break-through, it will make a massive difference to the speed of her development.

So, what else... over the past few days I've been tinkering around the house, sorting out suits & gear for the groomsmen, got a massage, saw Star Wars for the 2nd time, bought some new shoes.  What next.. I must start on sorting through the garage & spare room this afternoon.  We have a lot of stuff we can sell or throw out.  Planning on splitting the garage in two... a sell side & a trash side.  Sounds like fun. 

2016 - Setting Some Ground Rules

Ok, so here comes a big year with at least 2 certainties.. Getting married in March and buying a house sometime after that. Plenty of other smaller things to look forward to throughout the year but I'll talk about those when they happen. For now, just going to say that today marks the first of many blogs, a decision I have made for the following reasons:

1. I need an outlet. It helps me stay on track by reflecting on my days & thoughts.
2. I need to have something to look back on. Years are going by faster & faster and it all seems a blur. I hope that having these physical memories will make each day more valuable.
3. I need to be more productive. I'm always putting things off, claiming to be busy, which I am, but I need to make the most of my time with the people I care about while balancing my workload. I must do this without overloading myself & becoming a high-strung, stressed out individual.
4. I have a crap memory. Yep, for the same reasons as #2.
5. I am doing this for me. I should point out that I am doing this for me, but it is on the internet so if you find it useful or think someone else might... share/comment away!

My measure here is 30 mins of writing & reflection each day. I plan on doing this at the end of each day once my daughter is in bed.

I have a great feeling about this year. Not 100% sure what it is, but that makes it all the more interesting!

One last thing. I need to become fit again. That'll be one part of this. Right now, I have the biggest gut I've ever had & I'm weighing in at 75.6kgs; the heaviest I've ever been & I'm getting married in 2 months. Time to get busy!

Sleep: the forgotten state

Here I am again. 5am & severely sleep deprived. Not even quite sure how I'm typing this. Thank you technology for autocorrect.

If you've ever had a sleepless night, surely yes, we all have, you know the struggle that is the next day. Now multiply that by 14 and you're where I'm at. The constant twitch in my left eyelid is ever so slowly pecking away at my sanity.

This morning we've been attempting to get Turtle back to sleep since 230am. Apart from the 1 night where her grandparents rescued us (or was it 2, its all a blur), this spout has been non stop for almost 2 weeks. Nothing works, its just a matter of riding it out until she exhausts herself, meanwhile I lie here in a semiconscious state the whole time.
It's pretty obvious to me I'm not coping well with this; and really, who would?! I can actually feel myself getting stupider with each sleepless night that passes. It impacts my ability to make good decisions, to think clearly and to ultimately coordinate a standard day at work.

Ah, hello my morning alarm; time to get up & guess what... Turtle is now fast asleep.

I'm going to smile and wave at myself in the mirror.

To be continued...

Global Development Delay: Dad's view

For me, having a daughter diagnosed with Global Development Delay has always been difficult to explain to people.  I mean, even Wikipedia only has a half-arsed explanation.  If you want a better understanding, check out this basic fact sheet before you read on.  FYI, Cailin is delayed in all 5 points listed, but I'll explain that in more detail later on. In short, the absolute truth is that she is in a space where if you watch her briefly or glance at a photo, most of the time Cailin displays all the normal characteristics of a 2.5 year old.  It's only when you spend some quality time with her & actually attempt to interact that most people will fast learn she is not okay. Again, more on that later.

I recently had a realisation that I am quick to avoid the topic of my daughter's progress.  I've never thought it be intentional but in truth it is. I certainly do find it harder each day to bring myself to work through the answer to the question "How is Cailin/your daughter going?".  The majority of the time I will respond with a simple "She's going good" and then lead into something along the lines of how she is the most amazing little person & how I love her like crazy. All of which are of course true, it's just that the "going good" is a mask, a brave face, for the fact that she is well behind to where she should be, but we are working hard every day to move forward with small wins every so often.  I'm now at a point where going through the true story with people is difficult because, unfortunately, most responses consist of telling me that she'll be right or she'll catch up or the almighty "It could be worse!", as though it's nothing to worry about, you know, business as usual.  The alternative to these responses being the experts who have not even attempted to understand Cailin's condition and prematurely stamp directives & advice as though it can be a quick fix to all of her problems.  This sounds harsh, I know. I understand that everyone has good intentions, and some just don't know what to say.  I get it.  It just doesn't make it any easier & is not something I want to be a part of a "small talk" conversation.  Hence, I choose to pass it off as "she is good".

Fast forward to yesterday.  Something inside me broke.  After a half hour swimming lesson with others around her age we headed back to the car.  I was down & out, mentally exhausted.  We put Cailin in her seat, buckled ourselves in & one simple "Are you okay?" question from Jade triggered it all and I became a blubbering mess.  To get straight to the point, in this case, it was not the comparisons to other children her age that hurt, it was the lack of understanding, the judgmental eyes and the avoidance of conversation, all from the other parents in the session.  I have felt this since we started the lessons earlier this year but today was different, after having a few weeks off it felt as though we were not welcome, like we were in the way & setting a bad example for the other children.  Three quarters of the way through we withdrew from the session and went to play on the other side of the pool where Cailin could be free & happy.

There is no quick fix to feeling this way either.  As a parent to a 2.5 year old child diagnosed with GDD there are still so many unanswered questions.  We are doing everything possible to give our daughter the best life, to find out what is driving these delays & help her reach her full potential.  It is a tough & exhausting road and it is everything about who she is and what she can do that keeps us on the path.

The End of Facebookuary!

So I've turned Facebook on again - Hi to e-Veryone reading this! Hope you've all had an awesome February. I must say, I'm not all that excited about being back on, but definitely keen to see some pics of what you've been up to.  My original goal was to catch up with peeps in the real world.  I did a bit of that, made some overdue calls and so on, but was a little distracted with work & my daughter's health. Needless to say, social networking in the Facebook sense is good for times like the above mentioned, if only for convenience when time is scarce.  Either way, I still find that it is a distraction, so I made some changes...

The biggest change - I deleted A LOT of people from my friends list, down from around 300 to only 30. Not because I don't like them, not at all, but because I only want to interact with family and other people quite close/important to me.  In saying that, I think I may have gone overboard as Facebook doesn't make it easy to remove friends, in fact, I KNOW I have accidentally removed a number of people I wanted to remain connected to.  Whether that is a browser error or a FB error, I don't know.  It would have been easier to just have all people in a list with a check box & a delete button (just like deleting your emails!). But, that's how FB grows, by overwhelming suggestions of possible connections, hobbies & interests.  Of course they would not make it easy to remove connections!

Throughout Feb I spent about the same amount of time on google+ as I normally do.  Checking in for updates maybe 2 to 3 times a day. A few shares & posts here and there.  Great interactions with people I share interests with (gaming, tech & vinyl to begin with).  These are mostly random people with great ideas & opinions.  Perfect for a quick snapshot on what is happening around the world in terms of things I'm passionate about.

For some reason the pace has been picking up on LinkedIn.  Colleagues, former & current, have been adding me & endorsing my skills.  I've never really spent much time on this site but I can see it's worth.  Great for professional recommendations, networking and probably also perfect for when you're on the job hunt!  I've heard a few stories of people being poached by other companies because of their LinkedIn profile.  Interesting.  Glad I'm happy where I am.

I've never really been a fan of the other big networking sites.  I understand Twitter, but it never really grabbed me as true social networking, more a public SMS forum. Does that even make sense??  I also found that following the same people/companies on google+ were easier to interact with, in that I had better interactions because real people with real names were talking.

All in all, going forward I'm going use g+ to interact with people who share similar interests to me, LinkedIn (and Salesforce Chatter) for professional interactions & Facebook for family & close friends.  I think the only thing left for me to work out now is how to adjust all of my Facebook privacy settings again...